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Forest Ray Moulton (April 29, 1872 – December 7, 1952) was a U.S. astronomer. He was born in Le Roy, Michigan, and was educated at Albion College. After graduating in 1894, he performed his graduate studies at the University of Chicago and gained a Ph.D. in 1899. He is noted for being a proponent, along with Thomas Chamberlin, of the hypothesis that planetismals had coallesced to form the solar system. Their hypothesis called for the close passage of another star to trigger this condensation, a concept that has since fallen out of favor. In the first decades of the twentieth century, some additional small satellites were discovered to be in orbit around Jupiter. Dr. Moulton proposed that these were actually gravitationally-captured planetismals. This theory has become well-accepted among astronomers. Moulton crater on the Moon is named after him.
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